The Associated Press has sent new signals in recent days of its intention to protect its content and deal harshly with those who use it extensively. It has proposed a news registry to tag and track its content as it's being used, with the intention of working through arrangements with users to pay for that content.

Setting aside the technical questions about such an approach --- most bloggers and aggregators find it simple to cut and paste content in such a way as to bypass something like AP is proposing --- the larger question of the inherent approach has touched off some extreme criticism of the venerable news agency.

Jeff Jarvis, one of the more notable critics of AP's approach in recent months, is arguing that the assets inside the Internet offer more than AP could --- thus, individuals and organizations should mass and replace it.

In Techdirt, Mike Masnick implies (but doesn't provide clear sourcing) that insiders are critical of AP's approach. He is suggesting Reuters step in and pick up the ball. It should encourage bloggers to link to them instead, he argues.

Associated Press has generated a lengthy newsfeature on the debate involving whether it's smart to charge for online news. AP itself is in the midst of testy discussions with search engines like Google and Yahoo and with the blogosphere over their use of AP material.

Given AP's recent aggression toward those who clip too much of its dispatches, let me suggest you follow the link here and have a look.

There is very little new ground covered, but it does end up suggesting that niche material has the best opportunity for monetization. That said, it also quotes those who doubt newspapers are sufficiently savvy to identify and milk those niches.

Jason Preston's EatSleepPublish posting identifies some principles and practices designed to rein in the concerns about Associated Press and its intentions to target blogs using its content.

Preston has some fairly straightforward ideas: Make a blog with more than $250k in revenue subscribe, leave the others alone. The principle he invokes is a sound one: Don't harass the small fry but be direct with those clearly attempting to (and succeeding at) making money off your content without paying for it. In other words, separate the enthusiastic fan from the enthusiastic entrepreneur.

The only concern I'd have about such an approach is the way blogging firms could diversify their holdings to avoid a fee, much in the way they might to avoid a large tax bill. But that's for a brighter mind to figure out.

In his latest Buzzmachine post, Jeff Jarvis minces nothing on the Associated Press' attempts to fend off use of its material online by others: You're the problem, you homogenized the content, and now that you can't take advantage of the link economy, you're suggesting you're Don Quixote.

He ridicules the AP's plan to establish a portal. He suggests that, rather than attack bloggers who repurpose its content, AP should be part of a solution that links to original content --- as should aggregators and search engines. Rather than fight the Internet, why not use technology to feature the original work most prominently?

He goes on at length and suggest the AP is the enemy of the newspaper, which offers original work and watches it rewritten and redistributed.

I would suggest that AP was the original participant in a link economy in a pre-Internet age, in that it worked as a cooperative to do what Jarvis suggests: do what you do best, link to the rest. Only, in the AP era, it wasn't a link, but a throw --- a technical distribution of that content to some paper far away that couldn't gather the information for itself. It's a different era now.

The Google policy blog has a considered response today to the Associated Press announcement Monday that it intends to crack down on the use of its copyrighted material.

Alexander Macgillvray, a counsel for Google, notes that AdSense attached to newspaper Web sites delivers hundreds of millions of dollars to the newspaper business. There are fair use provisions to permit snippets of AP content, but Google's job is to drive and retain traffic for those sites, he asserts.

The AP move doesn't pertain to Google, he said.

The Associated Press, the venerable news agency with resources worldwide, intends to crack down on copyright violators and will try to direct traffic away from sites improperly using its content.

This is a major development in the largely laissez-faire environment in which content is cut and paste with no real accountability. AP is essentially saying it'll pursue those who aren't linking properly and who are taking its material and gaining traffic and revenue without paying.

The New York Times reported later Monday that the move is directed particularly at search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like Huffington Post.

AP chairman Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group Inc., puts it this way: "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more."

What is unclear is how it will pursue the offenders, what it will permit sites to use fairly and freely, and what others might do to follow suit. But the implications are substantial for those who have with impunity used AP content to bolster posts or even posted AP content inside their wireframes.

The New York Times' Brian Stelter has summarized the ongoing dispute between those who curate and those who are curated. There is nothing particularly new in his piece, but it is a strong overview (with many star appearances) on the degree to which sites can comfortably (ie, legally) scrape another's work.

The Associated Press and GateHouse Media have each served notice in recent months of their discomfort with the way in which their proprietary content was being used freely elsewhere. While sites cite the "fair use" provisions of U.S. copyright law --- essentially permitting one-time editorial use that gives the audience a good sense of the work created --- others are of the belief that the scraping goes too far in revealing the highlights. It's as if every movie site discussed the most important scene, they argue.

Stelter's piece helps understand the lay of the land.

Earlier this month CNN invited about three dozen print editors to Atlanta to discuss the viability of a new news service that would be a lower-cost version of Associated Press. About 100 U.S. newspapers have served the required two-year notice to leave AP, principally because of rates.
The results of the Atlanta gathering were seemingly mixed. A number of smaller papers appear interested, but the larger markets don't appear publicly convinced ---- although it should be noted they haven't seen a service yet and also know the economics of their business are so challenged that dropping AP may be a necessity in years to come.
The San Francisco Chronicle has an update on the CNN option. CNN is saying a decision on whether to proceed will be made within weeks, not months.

In truth, few can offer the breadth of service of Associated Press. In truth, few need it.
The dispute at the moment involving about 100 newspapers and AP focuses on rates, on tiers of service and how they're defined, on ownership of content and how it can be shared, and on a general upset among papers that in their darkest moments AP isn't bending sufficiently to help them weather what looks like a protracted storm.
In a few isolated cases --- by no means common in the industry --- some papers are beginning to form regional alliances to share copy and serve notice they'll live without AP some time in the future (AP requires a two-year severance notice, so the revenue will keep arriving until 2010).
But CNN has sensed an opening and stepped in with an offer to provide a text service to complement the extensive audio/video elements it now sells to television, radio and online media. It has invited papers to come see the proposed expansion this week in Atlanta, and the New York Times provides an overview.

It'll be worth paying attention to the impact of Politico's offer to provide news content free to sites (and their papers) that, in turn, share online revenue from its national advertising.
This is the first major example of how a new economic model is emerging in syndication and services. Rather than subscribe to a service and sell advertising on your own, the service's content and advertising are provided and the outlet receives the editorial material free and a share of the ad revenue attached to that content.
In the U.S., a handful of news outlets are serving notice of displeasure with The Associated Press (the Newark Star-Ledger has started to publish without AP content, even though it's still in the cooperative, while a handful of other dailies have said they intend to leave when their contracts expire).
It will bear watching whether this move into a link economy will serve as a win-win.
Full disclosure: Our chain left The Canadian Press a year ago and redirected those funds into an enlarged Canwest News Service. Other international services, offset our loss of The AP, which has an exclusive contract with CP in Canada.